Well, for the sake of my younger son, I’m REALLY hoping this is true.
Signed, mom of a just finished freshman year student who has a summer job in his field doing very much what he wants to do for a career and he’s loving it, but who had a rough first semester and the 2.88 to prove it…
Great he got a gig. Hopefully the grades will come up a bit but if not, he’ll still have an employer or maybe multiple that he’s impressed (hopefully).
A low GPA after freshman year isn’t uncommon. He’s got time to bring it up, and the job will give him a nice resume boost.
Just spoke to a work colleague (at a dealer, I call on car dealers). Her son graduated UTK and is at an investment bank in SF. I hadn’t heard of it and I asked what type of work because others on here say having the title means nothing. He worked in NY last summer at one of the Japanese banks. She said he’s in the mid markets - not exactly sure what that entails. He has a shared apartment in Richmond CA - walking to work so sold his car - a low six figure salary and a bonus that will hopefully = 75-100% of his salary.
He also applied for and got interviews at 4 deferred MBAs - looking at US News rankings - all top 6. Was declined at one but getting the interview is a feat (she said). He’ll hear back from the 2nd by Friday she thinks.
But even from a non-target school, you can still make it happen.
Richmond, CA is not really in walking distance to SF, although parts may be in short walking distance to a BART station that goes to SF financial district. There is also a Richmond district in SF, but that would be a very long walk to the SF financial district (but there is public transportation).
He’s not walking to work in SF from Richmond.
Anecdotes are nice, and I’ll always cheer a grad who finds a job that pays a decent salary, and especially if the grad is excited about it.
But, anecdotes don’t change the generality that this cohort of graduates is facing a very difficult job market. Their unemployment rate is around 5.6% and approximately 40% of the ones employed are underemployed, working jobs that don’t require a college education. They could be impacted for years to come, both in earnings and career advancement. For a lot of new graduates this has to be very discouraging. My heart goes out to them. Not many saw this perfect storm gathering.
Gift link:
The linked article references the graphs below as a source of the unemployment rate and underemployment rate. Unemployment rate is indeed 1-2% percent higher than during the post-COVID employment boom, but not as high as multiple other periods. Underemployment rate seems lower than historical norms. College post-grad outcomes surveys as a whole also show little change in unemployment or inflation adjusted wages. It’s certainly not what I’d describe as “a perfect storm.” Maybe there will be more notable change in the future, or maybe there will not. The future is uncertain.
You may be right that “perfect storm” overstates it, but those figures include graduates ages 22–27. The 24–27 year olds entered the job market under much better conditions than recent grads did. Even so, when 46% of college graduates either are not working, or are working in jobs that don’t require a degree, something is off. I truly believe in the value of education for its own sake, but when the average cost of a four-year degree runs from $124,000 to $262,000, I wonder what could change to improve that outcome. Are we graduating far more people than the labor market can absorb into degree-level jobs? Is there a mismatch between the majors students choose and the fields employers are actually hiring in?
I imagine the kids of the CC crowd are faring better than average, and the article points out that there is still a payoff for having a college degree versus not having one. It’s definitely not all doom and gloom.
My point was while something is off, 46% either unemployed or underemployed is nothing unusual, as the average for past 35+ years was 47%. Stats for how this figure has changed over time is below.
Recent Grad Unemployment + Recent Grad Underemployment %
- 1990: 46%
- 1995: 48%
- 2000: 42%
- 2005: 47%
- 2010: 53%
- 2015: 50%
- 2020: 45% (Jan) → 52% (Sep)
- 2026: 47% (Mar, latest available)
- Monthly Average from Jan 1990 to Mar 2026 = 47.3%
This figure has been discussed before. Some of the historically high % may relate to defining underemployed as the majority of employees in the corresponding fed job title grouping say that their job does not require a college degree.
My view is that we are currently in a correction period. Something of a bubble during and post-Covid, and now the pullback. It stinks to be in the cohort when there is a pullback, but I don’t believe the answers to either of your questions is “Yes”.
There are always labor shortages, even during periods of high unemployment. That’s how a market economy works. During recessions in places like the former Soviet Union there were labor shortages and overages as well- it’s just that nobody publicized the body count. So you had concert pianists mowing the lawns in public parks, and historians working as custodians. Anything to make sure that the overall number was “100% employed”.
I suspect that when the current market corrects, we will learn that in fact, we have produced too many CS grads. There was so much froth in tech hiring– for 10-12 years by my count, that every kid who didn’t like blood (so no med school), didn’t like to read (so no law school) decided that CS was the answer.
Of course, not every kid who wanted to major in CS ended up doing that- but many of them ended up in “IT adjacent fields” which to ambitious parents sounded just as good. There was an explosion on campuses- the need to hire more faculty, just as it became difficult to hire faculty because the salaries for PhD’s in industry were exploding at the same time.
But now here we are. Big Tech is shedding– some publicly, some quietly. The froth is off the VC world’s enthusiasm for the next big thing, unless it’s AI adjacent which means there are a LOT of “could be successful” startups that aren’t getting funded. And where Big Tech goes, so do the ancillary fields- the bankers who work on bond issues, stock buy backs; the real estate companies which own and operate tech appropriate office space; the wide range of “business services”– competitive research, accounting firms, etc. that serve tech.
So I think once the current malaise is over, tech will be MUCH smaller, and everyone else will normalize as well.
I’ve heard from colleagues that the next “big wave” is going to be that old and worn shoe– Global Affairs/Diplomacy with extra points going to students with fluency in “strategic languages”. If the current political situation has taught large corporations anything, it’s that they need people on staff who can help decipher what is going on in the world. The Strait of Hormuz closes- what does that mean for companies which trade soybeans and corn futures? The price of natural gas is going up- which countries benefit and how? Tariffs are a moving target- but do we expand our production facilities in Viet Nam, or open a shuttered factory in Akron OH? The Chinese EV vehicles are building market share faster than the analysts predicted. What do we know about the current political situation in China and why did the analysts get it wrong?
So my money is on History, regional studies, foreign languages, global affairs, poli sci. When the folks in your own government who are supposed to understand these things clearly don’t- and seemingly don’t care about NATO, our post-WWII alliances, intelligence sharing, etc. companies will need to hire their own people who do.
OR- agronomy, marine biology, anything water/ecology related.. At the end of the day, the one thing AI will not be able to do is produce a loaf of bread, a bowl of rice, or a platter of green beans. It will facilitate producing those things, but it can’t do it by itself. So experts in marine life, seed technology, less water intensive agriculture- sounds like a winner to me.
As if “college graduates” are a fungible good. That’s hilarious.
And this nugget. MSN
Just a different perspective
It means these majors don’t have many natural job areas of their own so that the kids need to go to other areas 
IMO it means there are lots of opportunities for people with humanities and other degrees.
“The intriguing findings: Grads who majored in the social sciences and humanities are proving to be resilient in today’s job market because they gained skills that can be used across multiple industries. Meanwhile engineering graduates, who likely thought they’d picked a safe and lucrative major, not only face a weak hiring market, but also have more specialized skills that aren’t as versatile or as useful in as many industries. Overall, in today’s slow job market, LinkedIn found that versatility may be one of the biggest competitive advantages for new graduates.”
A lot of the data that suggests this is old — some of it perhaps several decades old when we had a different economy. If this were indeed true, more people would be clamoring to take humanities majors. This is not the case. So revealed evidence disagrees with the statement you make.
It’s not my statement, its a quote from Linkedin and its recent study
